As Gone Girl rings in ten years of Amazing Amy’s disappearing act, Mia Lee Vicino probes the mystery-thriller’s deep impact, from annual Valentine’s Day rewatches to the catharsis of the Cool Girl monologue.
Mia Lee Vicino
October 3, 2024
Letterboxd
This article contains spoilers for ‘Gone Girl’.
“Cool Girl is hot. Cool Girl is game. Cool Girl is fun.” With this incisive diatribe, Rosamund Pike as Amy Elliot Dunne articulates the previously inarticulable. The moment comes at the midpoint of Gone Girl, pulling the rug out from under first-time viewers, while devoted Amazing Amy acolytes mouth the sacred words along with her: “Cool Girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner and then presents her mouth for fucking.”
It’s been ten years since we were first visually exposed to the exquisite Cool Girl monologue; twelve since author Gillian Flynn initially published it across seven blistering pages of her bestselling source novel. David Fincher, Pike (who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance) and Ben Affleck as Amy’s “lazy, lying, shitting oblivious husband” Nick Dunne then brought this ice-pick sharp vision to life, crafting a simultaneous indictment and endorsement of marriage, of revenge, of feminine rage.
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